XXV. It may perhaps be objected to what I have been advancing, that the
very absurd opinions entertained in matters of religion, by the bulk of
the people of Asia, Africa, and America, without insisting, upon the
total want of any religion among some of them, should induce us to form a
very mean judgment of their talents.
XXVI. To this I answer in the first place, that although errors in
matters of religion are the worst of all errors, they are no absolute
proofs of the rudeness of those who assent to them. Nobody is ignorant,
that the antient Greeks and Romans, who were exceedingly well skilled in
arts and sciences, were extremely absurd with respect to the objects of
their adoration. They worshiped as deities, men who had been adulterers,
perfidious, and guilty of all sorts of wickedness. Rome, which as Saint
Leon observes, domineered over all the other nations, was herself under
the dominion of the errors of them all. When a man sets himself to search
for a divinity from among his own species, it is a mark of a depraved
imagination, and the question respecting his capacity, is not worth
enquiring into, as we may naturally conclude, he has lost his reason
before he makes the attempt. And he who walks blindfold, is not more
terrified by a high precipice than a low one, as he is unable to discern
the difference. I do not even know, whether when a man first begins to
err in these particulars, he does not go the most extravagant lengths,
who has been the best-informed; because in matters of religion, when the
first error has taken root, it is easy for the person who is possessed
with it, to confound the mysterious with the ridiculous, and by an
affected subtilty, pretend to discover some hidden signs of divinity in
those things, which in the eye of common sense, are the most remote from,
or have the least to do with it.
XXVII. I answer secondly, that we have no certainty, that the idolatry
of these various nations was so gross as it has been represented. With
respect to the antient idolaters, some learned men have enforced this
doubt very strongly, and have insisted, that there were solid reasons for
supposing, that in the image they did not worship the wood, the metal,
or the marble of which it was made, but some good genius or demon, whom
they believed to have resided in it. Truly it seems incredible, that
a statuary, such a one as Horace humourously describes in one of his
Satyrs, should stand with his hatchet in one hand, and having the other
on the wood he was about to work, suspended and perplexed, whether he
should carve the God Priapus, or Escanus; I say it is incredible, that
such a man should suppose himself vested with sufficient authority to
fabricate a Deity.
XXVIII. I say the same of the animated idols. How is it credible that
the Egyptians, who were for some ages the repositories of the sciences,
should chuse for the ultimate object of their adoration, a most vile
snake, and even a dog, or an onion, which Juvenal ironically and with
derision tells them, was raised up to them in their own gardens? _O
sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis numina._ It is much
more reasonable to suppose, that that nation, who were much addicted to
represent every thing enigmatically, and by symbols, should adore these
vile creatures in some mystical sense, which these served as a sort of
hierogliphics to explain the signification of, and that their adoration
of them, was not absolute but respective. The same reasoning might be
brought to apply to other nations, both of former and modern times, as
well as to them.
XXIX. I am confirmed in this opinion, by what I have read concerning the
superstition which prevails in the island of Madagascar. The inhabitants
of that island, worship a cricket, and every one rears his own with great
care and veneration. Some French ships in their voyage to India in the
year 1665, touched at Madagascar, and being apprized of the superstition
of the natives, a curious Frenchman, asked one of them whom they
respected as a wise man, what could induce them to worship so vile an
animal, who answered, _that they worshiped the principal and head of all,
that is the Creator in the creature, and that it was necessary to direct
their adoration to a sensible object, in order to fix the attention_.
Who could have expected to meet with so delicate a sentiment, in such a
country? I do not insist, that the reply exempts them from the note of
superstition, but it proves, that they are not stupid and insensible. If
the same observation the Frenchman made on the absurdity of the worship
of the people of Madagascar, had been made to an antient Egyptian, he in
all probability, would have returned the same answer to it in substance,
which the Madagascar man gave.
XXX. With regard to people who are supposed to have no religion at all,
I must declare, that I doubt whether there are any such people in the
world. The voyagers who assure us there are such, might possibly from
their want of sufficient intercourse with them, or from the want of
understanding their language, not be able to penetrate their sentiments
on that head; for all nature proclaims the existence of a Creator with so
loud a voice, that the most sleepy reason cannot fail to be awakened with
her cries.